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economics

Trade is great. We all trade. A lot of us trade labor for money that buys other things. A farmer trades corn for money that buys other things, and so on. No one is “against trade.” But is anything called “trade” always good for all involved?

Guess who is one of the biggest employers of minimum-wage employees? Your own federal government. The government now contracts out a lot of work to companies that pay really, really low wages for jobs that used to provide good pay and benefits. And this means that between nearly 2 million people have to live in poverty. Now, there are reports that President Obama is considering doing something about that.

Have you ever wondered why an economist would say that giving tax cuts to the rich makes the economy better? Or why they say that getting rid of unions is good for the economy? It turns out that many of the industry's experts are paid quite handsomely — by the very industry that they're supposed to be analyzing without bias.

Did the “stimulus” work? Republicans claim it was a failure, a waste of money, and was the reason the deficit soared. However, an updated version of familiar graph clearly shows the benefits of the much-derided stimulus package.

The U.S. Forest Service is in the business of preventing fires, not starting them. Yet the agency set off alarms in Congress and state capitols across the West by citing the automatic spending cuts as the basis for demanding that dozens of states return $17.9 million in federal subsidies.

Increasing the minimum wage is as no-brainer of a policy as it can get. One, it is extremely popular with the public. Two, it would impact millions of workers—more than 30 million workers would receive a raise if the minimum wage was increased.

The average American’s living standard would be much, much higher today if wages had not decoupled from productivity gains – with the gains all going to the 1 percent instead of being shared by workers. If wages had kept pace we wouldn’t feel the terrible squeeze that everyone in the middle class is feeling.